Christmas Eve

Go to bed babies. Go to bed now!

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Pee Eee

The Daddy submitted his application to the Texas Board of Professional Engineers to become a Licensed Professional Engineer, today. With a little luck and a lot of studying, The Daddy will be a licensed practicing Engineer by the middle of next year.

Open Letter to "The New" AT&T

For putting me through two days of phone calls, trips to the AT&T store, and phone tinkering to verify for you that a phone that you sold me will not work as advertised:

... and for lacking the technical resources or customer service will to do do the above yourself:

... and for making the process of replacing the mis-functioning phone as tedious and expensive as possible:

... and for wasting at least 30 minutes of my costomer service experience, distributed between multiple people, explaining to your customer service representatives that "bluetooth" is not an earpiece, but rather a communications protocol:

... and for claiming not to "support" certain features of the phone and hot-potato-ing me to the even more useless Motorola technical support, as soon as you figured out that you didn't know how to solve my problem:

... and for asking me at the end of every single phone call whether or not you had answered all of the questions that I had today, even when the answer was clearly no:

Bite me.

Sincereley,
Tank Thinker

Family Wish Lists

Babyfish

• life jacket that's like a shirt... to help get used to swimming
• cool stuff to decorate her room with a hula theme
• wooden puzzles
• hair

Superkid

• Diego Flash Jr. digital camera ($40 @ Target, Toys R Us, Best Buy)
• hot wheels track
• buzz lightyear night light
• water rocket
• mini boom box with CD player
• life jacket that's like a shirt... to help get used to swimming
• Trail-a-Bike or similar (Target)
• LED head lamp

Fambly

• shelves and cabinets for the living room and dining room
• new bathrooms (ours are just terrible, inexcusably bad layouts)
• video camera (mini-dv variety, good in low light)
• pergola
• fence (at road)
• subwoofer for home theater
• network USB print server

The Mommy

• DCI '94, '94 and '96 on DVD (http://www.dci.org/)
• A tear off desk calendar
• Harry Potter 5 and 6
• Anything Baby Blues

The Daddy

• green LED flashlight for trail running
• "Hokey Spokes"
• golf clubs
• CH Aero wheel covers
• arc welder

River Rat's Theory of Exponential Noise

Officemate and wizened Dad, River Rat, offers the following scientifically baseless theory:

When you have two kids, you have one line of communication between the two.
When you go to three kids, you have three lines of communication between the brood.
Thus, you increase the number of kids by 50%, but you triple the noise!

Half Bakery and Project List

driveway (in progress)
sprinkler system (in progress)
pergola
built-in benches in dining room
built-in shelves in dining room
built-in shelves and cabinets in living room
built-in bench seat in dining room
built-in shelves and desk for the cloffice
LED kitchen task lighting
LED outdoor lighting
LED bike headlight
Jeep LED interior lighting
ironing board hanger
coat rack upgrade
car computer (MP3, GPS/NAV, DVD)
handmade CPU case
outdoor grill and oven
bike trailer from scrap
trash trailer
straw bale office / granny flat
subwoofer
center channel speaker
water feature
rainwater collection system
fireplace upgrade
chimney upgrade
salvage laptop display as computer display
cat box upgrade
attic vent fan
rework kitchen sink plumbing
trailer for trash and recycling
rack for trash and recycling bins
Creative Zen charger
Jeep console upgrade

The Mommy's Pregnancy FAQ

Posted by The Daddy for The Mommy. The Mommy swears that she is not making any of this up. She has actually been asked these questions.

Q: (Read this with a screech over the cubicle wall:) "Krista! You're pregnant again? You're going to have 3 kids?! Did you do that on purpose?" Really. Not joking. I really got that question. Screeched. Which is how the rest of the office found out.

A: Yes, I'm pregnant again. Yes, we will have 3 children. Yes, we did that on purpose.

Q: "But, you already have a boy and a girl?"

A: I'm sorry. Have we broken some sort of rule that says families must stop procreating after they get a child of each gender? Geez, how bad does that suck to be the second son or daughter? "Gee, sweetie, it's not like we didn't want you, but we were really hoping you'd be a boy." Don't get me wrong, we could have had 11 sons and 1 daughter. But really, after the 4th or 5th male, it's time to just adopt the girl.

Q: "When are you planning to stop?" which is quite similar to "Whadya going for a baseball team?

A: 15. We'll stop at 15. I'm kidding.

Q: "When are you due?"

A: End of March.

Q: "So you could have an April Fool's baby?"

A: Nope, I'm a scheduled c-section. March 21 could be a pretty likely date. I definitely won't go past March 30th.

Q: "What do you mean you're having a planned c-section? Don't you want to experience birth?"

A: a) um, bite me. b) Let's see you carry 2 gigantic babies and then say I didn't "experience birth". My ribs still hurt from manually moving (Superkid)'s feet back inside my ribcage. c) 2 c-section scars. 2 big babies. my uterus does not need to contract.

Q: "What are you having?"

A: I'm only 20 weeks. We don't know.

Q: "No really, what are you having?

A: No really, we don't know. Ultrasound appointment is November 14. When we know, you'll know.

Q: "Why did you tell people you didn't know (Superkid) was a boy?"

A: We never told anyone we didn't know (Superkid) was a boy. Originally, we hadn't planned to find out, then we kept it to ourselves for a while (we told people that we weren't telling, not that we didn't know), then we told everyone.

Q: "Why did you tell everyone you didn't know (Babyfish) was a girl?"

A: Oh please, you think if I had known we were having a girl, I wouldn't have spent the second half of pregnancy buying dresses and princess tiaras and fairy wands and everything girly ever made?

Q: "What do you think this one is?"

A: (Superkid) says boy. Me: "You know you COULD get another baby sister." Superkid: "But I already have one of those." I think boy (I have serious pregnancy brain, which was much worse with the previous boy than girl). The old wives say girl. The Daddy doesn't know.

Q: "What do you want, boy or girl?"

A: Beyond the healthy with 10 fingers and toes? Either. I'd like (Babyfish) to have a sister and (Superkid) to be protector of his sisters, but I'd also like (Babyfish) to have brothers to take care of her and teach her how to properly swear and not get in trouble.

Q: "How are you feeling?"

A: Good now. August and September were pretty miserable.

Q: "What does (Superkid) think?"

A: He thinks he's getting a baby brother named Alex. (The Daddy) thinks this is hysterical because he likes the name Alex and I can't stand it. Once (Superkid) asked if we could name his baby brother Mars. I'm more likely to name a child Mars than Alex.

Q: "What does (Babyfish) think?"

A: She's a toddler. She thinks mommy is getting lumpy in strange spots.

Q: "Where are you going to put a third child?

A: "Excellent question, we're open to suggestions. The current idea is (to convert the 2nd and 3rd bedrooms into) a sleeping "porch" and play room.

Q: "If you don't have room for this one, are you going to sell it on eBay?

A: "I don't think eBay lets you sell body parts.

Q: "What if you sold a diaper with free baby included?"

A: I'll keep that in mind.

Q: "Can I name this one?"

A: No, but I'll be happy to consider your suggestions. At least, I'll be more than happy to pretend to consider your suggestions until you come up with something really good, we'll use it, then you won't be able to use the really good name because we already snagged it.

Q: "Are you going to give this one another weird name?"

A: Is LaGuardia Hamilton Neal weird? Kidding. Middle name will probably be Hamilton. You know us, can only be counted on to come up with one name and just use the default family middle name. (I actually think it's incredibly cool that our son and daughter have 3rd generation middle names).

Q: "Does this fetus have a nickname?"

A: Puh-huh! "Cadbury" and "Hamie" are joined by their sibling "Point Three".

Q: "Are you going to keep working?"

A: Yup. Everyone is happiest when The Mommy is not a stay-at-home mommy. I have the worlds most family-friendly and breastfeeding-friendly job. We're a titch nervous about the 2 months when I go back from leave before (Superkid) starts kindergarten, but it'll turn out ok.

Q: "How's everyone?"

A: B is good, his birthday was this weekend. He spent it coaching (Superkid's) soccer game, and using heavy equipment to work on the driveway. Ah, nothing says "happy birthday" like a Bobcat, (steamroller), road base and survey equipment. (Superkid) is perfect. He delighted Tia Roxy and Abuela Roxanna this weekend by counting to 20 in Spanish. We didn't know he could count past 10 in Spanish. He had an excellent pirate birthday party last weekend. (The Babyfish) is pretty good. We got sick of her getting frustrated when she needs help, so we taught her the sign for "help". Now instead of having a sign for "more" and one for "help" she has made up her own for "molp" or "helre" which means, "I want something, and it's The Mommy and The Daddy's job to figure what I want." I'm well. I can pretty much make it through a Saturday without a nap. OK, that's not at all true, but I've gone from 3-4hours during the first trimester to 1 hour these days.

And yes I really have gotten all of these questions.

Just In Time For Winter

I so rule. It took me about 8 months, but I fixed the Jeep's broken sunroof.

I had to drop the headliner, which means disassembling just about the whole dang car, to get to the sunroof. It took a $100 parts kit off of the Internet and a few weekend afternoons of investigating, disassembling, and eventually repairing.

I even "upgraded" the OEM pop rivets to #10 loctite-ed bolts. Superkid got the honor of the official demonstration test, for exceptional knowledge and faithful service at retrieving such oddities as torx drivers, assorted interior trim parts, and the always useful roll of teflon pipe tape.

It's good to have that sunroof working again... and The Mommy likes having the oh-(poo) handles back. They're good for leverage when refereeing the young-uns in the back seat.

As always, the question must be answered: why not pay someone to do it. Well, a normal body shop won't touch a sunroof. And now I know why. But the sunroof shop wanted about $3K to do the job. I had to at least try to fix it...

Fire

Maybe it was damp grass that broke his leg, but it certainly saved his house, truck, and who knows what else.

The superkids and I rounded a corner in our neighborhood yesterday evening on our way home and saw smoke. Then we saw the fire, a burnpile that had gotten a little out of hand. Neighbor Jeff was already there, sans cell phone, trying to figure out what to do.

I parked the car, rolled down the windows, and started stamping the low burning leading edge while I called 911. Jeff got the garden hose and went to work. By the time the the VFD got there, we had things damp, but not out.

The VFD cheerfully sprayed a truckload of water on the fire, thankful that it wasn't any more than it was. The grass was wet from this morning's light rain, he said. Without it, at least three houses would have been lost, not to mention a pickup truck that the fire had burned right under the gas tank of, and then stopped.

It turned out that this was the second EMS call of the day to that house. The owner, had slipped and broken his leg while starting the burn pile that morning. In the rush to get him to the hospital, the fire was forgotten.

A nice upside was that Superkid and Babyfish got to see the fire department in action, and Superkid in particular got a real-life example of why fire is not a toy.

Open Letter to Triple Crown of Running

Dear Triple Crown of Running,

For answering the thousands of complaints of frustration and technical problems with assertions that the Pike's Peak registration process is "fair"...

Bite me.

Sincerely,
Tank Thinker

Open Letter to Active.com

Dear Active.com:

Bite me.

Sincerely,
Tank Thinker

New Brother

Kaich now says he has a new baby brother, Elizabeth Kaye. "So now you have a big sister, Elizabeth Kaye, a baby sister, Elizabeth Kaye and a baby brother, Elizabeth Kaye?" "Yep" You'd think the kid would give us more credit for being able to come up with names for our children.

Super Rocket

Offspring Count

Brandon and Krista's count of offspring: 2
Kaich's count of siblings: 4. No 2. Maybe 2 real, 2 not real
Kaich's siblings:

• big brother Little John (not real)
• big sister Elizabeth Kaye (not real)
• baby sister Elizabeth Kaye (real) (Yes, there are 2 Elizabeth Kayes)
• short sister JT Allison (real) (To clarify: that's JT Allison, not JT, not Allison, JTAllison) "What does 'short sister' mean Kaich?" "She's just old." hmm. okie doke.

Definition: Swop

Pronunciation: 'swäp

Function: verb

Inflected Form(s): swopped; swop·ping

Etymology: Superkid's custom lexicon hybrid of swat, to strike, and whop, also to strike.

transitive verb1 a : to strike - swop·per noun

Example: Superkid used a broom to swop the icicles and knock them down.

ok, I've blogged

I'm going back to work now.

Definition: Fambly

Main Entry: fam·bly
Pronunciation: 'fam-blE, 'fam-buh-lE
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -lies
Etymology: The Mommy's custom lexicon, from English family
1 : a group of individuals living under one roof and usually under one head : HOUSEHOLD
Example: Alex's fambly has two mommies.

The Teeth and Hair Mutual Exclusivity Rule

Here's another item from our Committee for the Promulgation of Scientifically Baseless Theories.

Theory: Babies can grow hair or teeth, but not both at the same time.

Corrollary: Babies with lots of hair have to wait to get teeth. Babies who get their teeth early have to wait a while to get their hair.

Data: The Mommy has noted in her Real Job line of work that this rule very typically holds true.

Case Study 1: Superkid, who serves as our Chief of Polymer Impact Testing, had bunches of teeth very early, but did not get any hair for a good long time.

Case Study 2: Babyfish has very little hair and no teeth. This does not necessarily violate the Teeth and Hair Mutual Exclusivity Rule, as the rule only excludes simultaneous rapid development of teeth AND hair.

The Aquarium Theory of Big Shoes

The following is the first report from our science group, the Committee for the Promulgation of Scientifically Baseless Theories. The report briefly outlines a theory posed by my brother, who attempted to correlate the difference in height between himself and his friend with whether their moms bought their shoes a size too big or just right.

Theory: Children will grow into their shoes, as a goldfish will grow into its tank.

Corrollaries: 5'2" mothers can create 6'3" sons if she buys big shoes for them. If a parent wishes to stunt the growth of their child, the parent should buy the child small shoes.